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Potted landscapes on the Tōkaidō
Utagawa Hiroshige, Hiratsuka on the Tokaido, 1833–1834The Public Domain Review is a constant source of fascinating material and I thought I'd share here something I read about there recently, a book...
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Deep mellow shades breaking upon the view
Harriet Gouldsmith, A View of Hampstead Heath Looking Towards Cannon Place, 1818I recently came across a curious publication in which a landscape painting is the narrator of its own story. A Voice...
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The Canmore Mountain Range
The Dulwich Picture Gallery's Edward Bawden exhibition has a room devoted to 'Spirit of Place'. It includes 'Houses at Ironbridge' (1956/7 owned by the Tate) which is a good example of the way Bawden...
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Trodden by the feet of gods
I've been twice now to see Charmed Lives in Greece, a highly enjoyable (free) exhibition at the British Museum celebrating the creative lives of Patrick Leigh Fermor, John Craxton and Niko Ghika. In...
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The sun is slowly eclipsed
I wrote here a few weeks ago about two of the Tacita Dean exhibitions in London this year; this post is about the third one, 'Landscapes', at the Royal Academy. The first thing that will strike any...
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From the earth decay is seeping
Heidegger thought that all of Georg Trakl's poetry was really one long poem, and perhaps it could be said that all of his poetry takes place in one landscape, with its and silent woods and dark paths,...
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The Lake of Ashes
Claude Lanzmann died this week - obituaries can be read here, here and here. For all the praise that Shoah received, it can still feel as if the film is underrated, perhaps because to praise...
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Down the stream to the City of Camelot
Illustration from Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Maloryprinted by Wynkyn de Worde in 1498Source: John Rylands LibraryI have written before here about the description of nature in Gawain and the Green...
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Evening Calm, Concarneau
I am over halfway through the year now in my project to tweet a landscape a day. Looking back to January 1st when I launched this initiative, I see I was particularly keen to include as many women...
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On the Banks of the Yangtze
Isabelle Bird, Trackers Houses on the Banks of the Yangtze, 1896Source: The Ammonite Press. In sketching, a landscape is represented by signs on paper, but in photography the actual view is imprinted...
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The field has eyes and the wood has ears
Hieronymus Bosch, The Tree-Man, c. 1505Source: Wikimedia CommonsJoseph Leo Koerner's magisterial Bosch & Bruegel: From Enemy Painting to Everyday Life (2016) is so rich in interest it could furnish...
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Farther hills as hills again like these
Pieter Breugel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565Source Wikimedia CommonsTo follow up my previous post, drawing on Joseph Leo Koerner's Bosch & Bruegel: From Enemy Painting to...
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The Distant Cry of the Deer
Shibata Zeshin, Deer in a Forest, c. 1880sSource: Wikimedia Commons This week I attended the opening gala concert of the 2018 World Shakuhachi Festival. The photograph below (by Jean-François Lagrost)...
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River in the Catskills
Thomas Cole, River in the Catskills, 1843Source: Wikimedia CommonsWhat was the first appearance of a train in a painting? Most people know Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed (1844), which is the earliest...
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End of the Glacier
We enjoyed a family day trip to Hastings at the weekend, where I am pleased to say I was victorious at crazy golf. As a child I always imagined designing my own courses and on the way round I was...
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Desert tracings
Last week the BBC published an interesting article by Paul Cooper on the theme of ruins and Arabic writing. He notes that the 'motif of the atlal (‘ruins’) originates in the pre-Islamic period',...
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The road plunged at once into a beautiful wood
Because News From Nowhere is a dream vision of the future I have found myself wondering sometimes if certain details I recall are really in it, or whether I dreamed them myself. After a trip to...
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A view of the gardens of the Palais du Luxembourg
Jacques-Louis David, View of the Gardens of the Palais du Luxembourg, 1794 'After walking through a play area, as usual not very pretty – poorly designed swings and toboggans, painted in glaring...
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Sacred landscapes
Simon Bening, The Baptism of Christ and The Temptation of Christ, c. 1525-30Source: J. Paul Getty MuseumLast year the J. Paul Getty Museum mounted an exhibition called Sacred Landscapes: Nature in...
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Reading in the Wilderness
Giovanni Bellini, detail from Saint Jerome Reading in the Wilderness, c. 1485National Gallery. Source: Wikimedia CommonsI've not yet been to see the new Bellini-Mantegna exhibition although I see...
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